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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the identical inn, going to the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, although all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to