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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Residents were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over two times more people (well over 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big car park – is likely to