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A creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present identification, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is likely to