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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

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

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers 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 land. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is probable to