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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same inn, going to the very same church and placing their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to