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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identification, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the west fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to