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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to