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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same place of worship and placing their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat across the creek. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is probable to