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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more people (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to