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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most significant events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to