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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span 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 partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same church and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – 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, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is probable to