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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to