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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the complete village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is likely to