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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the same tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, near where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to