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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same church and sending their children to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over double the number people (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big car park – is expected to