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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical pub, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to