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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the very same inn, attending the very same place of worship and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display ID, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most significant events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over double the number people (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big car park – is probable to