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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their history. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to