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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the very same inn, attending the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to