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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the same tavern, attending the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the two, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to