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An creek so low you barely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identification, although all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Residents were asked early on about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to