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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition 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 entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the very same pub, attending the identical church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to