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An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same inn, going to the same church and enrolling their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to present identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to