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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the identical pub, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large car park – is expected to