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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, attending the identical church and placing their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western perimeter, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to