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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire community, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to