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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Past Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They chose a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to