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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the very same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is probable to