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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to display identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number people (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to