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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to