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A stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western edge, close to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to