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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life creating it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to