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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents drinking in the same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, although everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west edge, close to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to