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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall 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 the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most significant events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – 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, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to