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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They selected a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to