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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the identical church and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to show identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to