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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is likely to