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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show ID, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is expected to