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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical inn, going to the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the two, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. About 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly depart. 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 TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to