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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The project is about to reach completion: 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 entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole community, establishing their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to