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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the very same pub, going to the very same church and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a series of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to