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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, close to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to