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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole community, setting up their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to