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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the same inn, going to the identical church and enrolling their kids to the same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete village, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display ID, although all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

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