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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to present identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were asked early on about how much structure they wished to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to