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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were forced to show identification, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained together with a series of displays depicting the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and large parking lot – is likely to