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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the identical church and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to