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A brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is soon 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 inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the same school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to