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A brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a set of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large car park – is likely to