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An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, although all understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west edge, near where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to