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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

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