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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, going to the same place of worship and sending their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved together with a collection of displays showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is probable to