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An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the stream. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to display identity papers, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US 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 hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to