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An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the same pub, visiting the very same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to