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An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, attending the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were asked early on about how much wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west fringe, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the community’s history. As we move, the director details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to