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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and sending their kids to the identical school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display ID, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to