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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the entire village, setting up their command in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present ID, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to