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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, 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 (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big car park – is expected to