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A stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the identical religious building and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to