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A brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the same place of worship and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

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