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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, attending the same religious building and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the entire village, establishing their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to