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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to