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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle 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 dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the west edge, near where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to