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A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to