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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to