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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many people (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to