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A stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, attending the very same church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained together with a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to