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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to