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An brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, attending the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is expected to