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A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, 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 was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, visiting the identical church and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to display ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is probable to