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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, attending the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the western edge, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a collection of displays showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to