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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many people (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to