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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to