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An brook so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal 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 hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to