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A brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the very same inn, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the complete community, establishing their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large car park – is probable to