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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers set about documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to