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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same pub, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the western fringe, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to