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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, visiting the same place of worship and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the western edge, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

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