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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the same tavern, visiting the same church and placing their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were asked early on about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to