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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked early on about how much barrier they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to