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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identification, although each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to