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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back across the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to