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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identification, although all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to