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A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the very same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and sending their children to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to