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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to care for their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to