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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span 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 barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to