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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the very same church and sending their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the whole community, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to show ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to