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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the creek. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present ID, even though all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the west edge, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over double the number persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large car park – is probable to