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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled early on about how much wall they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to