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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, visiting the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to