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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how much structure they desired to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved together with a series of displays showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to