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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

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

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is probable to