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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the identical pub, visiting the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to