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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to