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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, near where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to