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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire community, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is likely to