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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to