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An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to present identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to