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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to