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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, near where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to