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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same place of worship and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to