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An creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, attending the very same church and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identification, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to