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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back across the creek. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved alongside a set of displays showing the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to