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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and placing their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over double the number people (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to