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An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, visiting the same church and placing their children to the identical school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

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