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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the two, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to