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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, going to the same church and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, near where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could operate the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to