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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to