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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the whole community, setting up their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show identification, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to