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An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show ID, although all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to