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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Past Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the same tavern, going to the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to