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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete village, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to