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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is probable to