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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the very same inn, visiting the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic 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 over double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to