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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their children to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to