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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, attending the same church and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and large car park – is probable to