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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence 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 assembly of local people began documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the western fringe, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to