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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, going to the same church and sending their children to the same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to show ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number persons (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large car park – is probable to