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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to present identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of displays depicting the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is likely to