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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the same church and placing their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to present ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over twice as many people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to