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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to