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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is expected to