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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to