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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

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 early on about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to