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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, attending the identical place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat across the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to