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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the same pub, visiting the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to