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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to