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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they tried to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large car park – is expected to