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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how much wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is expected to