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A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the very same pub, attending the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They selected a portion on the western fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to