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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to