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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the western fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to