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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to