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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the creek. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They chose a section on the west fringe, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big car park – is likely to