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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays showing the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. About 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is probable to