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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same inn, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to present ID, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is expected to