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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the same church and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big car park – is expected to