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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is probable to