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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the same pub, attending the same church and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, although all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15k visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to