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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the identical church and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were asked early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to