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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, attending the identical religious building and sending their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

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