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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and placing their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over double the number people (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to