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A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the same church and sending their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to