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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the same church and placing their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to