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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical inn, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to