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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western edge, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

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

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Changes

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