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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to display ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to