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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the identical inn, going to the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large car park – is probable to