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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the identical pub, going to the identical religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identification, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled early on about how much structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved together with a set of displays showing the most impactful dates in the village’s past. As we walk, the director lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to