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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s past. As we move, the director details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to