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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to