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An creek so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to