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A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much wall they desired to keep. They selected a section on the west perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to