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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, near where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to