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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, going to the identical church and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how much structure they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to