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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical pub, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over two times more persons (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to