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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical inn, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western edge, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to