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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, attending the same church and placing their children to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15k visited every year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to