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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the very same inn, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the western fringe, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to