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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, setting up their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is probable to