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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started memorialising their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical pub, going to the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to