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A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most significant moments in the community’s history. As we move, the director details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to