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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the same tavern, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were asked early on about how much wall they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big car park – is probable to