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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the very same pub, visiting the same church and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the entire community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to