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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the same school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to