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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were required to present identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the west edge, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to