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An creek so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, visiting the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to