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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to