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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to