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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the same tavern, visiting the same church and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire community, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is likely to