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A creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking 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 Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to present identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to