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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, setting up their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to