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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to