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An creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical pub, going to the same church and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much wall they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the west edge, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to