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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to present identification, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are maintained together with a set of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big car park – is expected to