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A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same place of worship and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to display ID, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Residents were asked early on about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, 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 fresh interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to