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A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical inn, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, creating their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to display identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to