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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to