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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the western fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over twice as many people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is expected to