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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the identical inn, going to the same place of worship and sending their children to the same school.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to