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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, going to the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are maintained together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to