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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the identical pub, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the whole village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to care for their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to