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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more people (well over 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to