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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to