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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, attending the very same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to