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A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the west edge, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to