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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same inn, visiting the very same church and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the complete village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big car park – is expected to