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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display ID, although all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large car park – is expected to