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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15k visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to