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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large car park – is likely to