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An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, attending the same church and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how much wall they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is expected to