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An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the same pub, visiting the same place of worship and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to