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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the identical church and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but never both, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to