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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to