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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, attending the identical church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the whole community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to