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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, going to the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat across the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, near where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to