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An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to