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A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to