GERMANY, THE LITTLE BERLIN OF BAVARIA
Still today, many years after the German reunification, the Northern Bavaria's region of Frankenwald shows many evidences of the old Iron Courtain that divided Eastern Europe from Western Europe. The most importanti s in the small village of Mödlareuth, situated partly in Bavaria and partly in Thuringia, was called Little Berlin because a wall divided it, like the Berlin Wall divided Berlin. The northern part was in East Germany and the southern part in West Germany. Now a museum shows the history of the villane at Cold War times. In 1945, Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone while Bavaria went to the American occupation zone. After the village became divided by the border between two states, DDR (German Democratic Republic) and BD( German Federal Republic). A pass was required to cross between the two parts of town. Many local villagers of Eastern Side residents were forced to revocate and, after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the wall of Mödlareuth was built in 1966. In 1983 the U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush visited the village and exclaimed, "Ich bin ein Mödlareuther!", an allusion to John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" statement. Seven months after the Berlin Wall fell and four months before German reunification the Mödlareuth Wall was knocked down on 17 June 1990 using a bulldozer. A small portion has been retained as a memorial, as since 1994, Mödlareuth has had an open-air museum about the border between East and West Germany that includes a portion of the original wall. Although today the passage between the two parts of the village is free the residents still vote separately and send their children to different schools. Many other evidences, like, borders marks, military roads and watching towers survive in the forests of the Frankenwald. Others images of this reportage shows the daily life in DDR time.