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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is about 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 officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the identical religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to