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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the identical church and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, near where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is probable to