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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, visiting the same place of worship and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a series of displays showing the most significant events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to