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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is expected to