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An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began commemorating their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to show identification, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits showing the most significant events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is probable to