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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many people (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is expected to