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A creek so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the very same pub, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large car park – is probable to