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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, 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 villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the same religious building and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the western edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to