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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the same inn, going to the very same church and sending their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised 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 tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

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