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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the same pub, going to the identical religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to keep. They chose a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

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