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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

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