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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but not the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is expected to