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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

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

Historical Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was substantially fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big car park – is likely to