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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same church and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is probable to