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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most significant events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to