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A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were polled early on about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and large vehicle area – is expected to