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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same place of worship and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we move, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to