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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to display ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits showing the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to