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A stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, attending the same place of worship and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, although all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is likely to