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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical church and sending their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to