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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the very same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much wall they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big car park – is expected to