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An brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is probable to