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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the same pub, visiting the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is probable to