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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the very same pub, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to