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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the same pub, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show ID, although each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is probable to