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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is probable to