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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

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