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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about memorialising their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the identical pub, going to the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved together with a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to