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A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the very same inn, going to the same church and sending their kids to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display identification, although all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a series of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15k visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to