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A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their command in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to