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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

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

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the western edge, close to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to