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A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, creating their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over double the number people (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to