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A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to