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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, attending the very same church and placing their kids to the very same school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. About 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big car park – is expected to