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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more people (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large car park – is probable to