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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the very same place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Then came the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the rules: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is expected to