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A stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same pub, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the western perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to