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A brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the identical inn, attending the same church and sending their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, although each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to