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A creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but not the two, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to