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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the identical inn, visiting the same church and sending their kids to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to