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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the identical inn, attending the identical church and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large parking lot – is likely to