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A brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big car park – is probable to