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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15k visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to