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A brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical church and sending their children to the identical school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wished to keep. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is likely to