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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the same church and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over two times more persons (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to