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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to present ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the west edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to care for their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is probable to