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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. 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 barrier and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started memorialising their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to present ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to