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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a section on the west perimeter, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary 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 south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to