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An brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a year they seized the entire community, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is likely to