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A creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical inn, visiting the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, even though all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to