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An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their heritage. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to