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An brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to