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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, going to the same church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

After the War Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were required to display identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to