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An brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the whole community, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display ID, although all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to