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An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, going to the same church and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the entire village, creating their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present ID, although each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to