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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the same pub, visiting the same church and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back across the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display ID, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large car park – is expected to