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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same inn, going to the very same church and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, creating their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to