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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole village, creating their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat across the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to