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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is probable to