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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present identification, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to