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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the identical church and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, near where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved together with a set of displays depicting the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than two times more people (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to