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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to