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An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, close to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to