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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the same tavern, going to the very same place of worship and placing their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to