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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical pub, attending the identical church and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to