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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the identical church and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They chose a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to