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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to