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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the locals drinking in the identical pub, going to the identical church and sending their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to