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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to