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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the same inn, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to