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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the same pub, attending the very same place of worship and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the entire village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the west perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to