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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the identical pub, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their children to the same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to show identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the western fringe, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a set of displays depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to