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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to