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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the same inn, going to the very same church and placing their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to