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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the very same church and placing their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the complete community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Locals were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a set of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to