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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory 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 stream. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how much structure they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to