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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their heritage. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, attending the very same church and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to