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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to