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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the same inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete community, establishing their command in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were asked early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to