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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, going to the identical church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, close to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to