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A creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the same tavern, going to the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15k visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to