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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to