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A stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the same place of worship and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to