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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the same inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the whole village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official 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 residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to