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An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, going to the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were required to present identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is expected to