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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present ID, although all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to