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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the same tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are conserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over two times more persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

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