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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained together with a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to