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An brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the same pub, attending the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big car park – is likely to