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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to