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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, attending the very same church and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to