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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same inn, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to