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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to