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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the same tavern, attending the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is probable to