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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, going to the very same place of worship and sending their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat across the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more people (more than 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to