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An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the western edge, near where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to