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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the same pub, going to the very same church and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the creek. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much wall they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

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