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A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to