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An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the identical inn, going to the same church and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to