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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the entire community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the western fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to