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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to