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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to present ID, although all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

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