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A creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, attending the same church and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete village, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant dates in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to