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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the same church and sending their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the entire village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the western edge, near where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to