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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle 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 wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to display ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled early on about how much structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the western fringe, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to