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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the very same pub, visiting the same place of worship and sending their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the western fringe, close to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to