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An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to