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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the very same church and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to