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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, establishing their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identification, although all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification 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 barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big car park – is probable to