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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to