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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large car park – is probable to