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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the same church and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is expected to