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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the western fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to