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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their heritage. 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 open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same tavern, going to the same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to show ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wished to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k visited annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to