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A brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to