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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to present identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

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