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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the same pub, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They chose a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to