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A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to