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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, near where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but not the two, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to