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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the identical inn, going to the very same place of worship and sending their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to