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A creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the same tavern, visiting the same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to display ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to