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A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the identical inn, going to the very same religious building and placing their kids to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of displays showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large car park – is expected to