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An creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the same inn, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15k visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is likely to