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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present ID, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to