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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the complete village, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to