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An stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and sending their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large car park – is probable to