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An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same inn, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to