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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the very same pub, visiting the identical church and sending their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to