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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to