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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same pub, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a set of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big car park – is likely to