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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, attending the same church and sending their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. About 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to