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An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical inn, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to display ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to