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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked early on about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the western perimeter, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to