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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the same religious building and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, the director details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to