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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same tavern, going to the identical church and sending their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is expected to