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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west edge, near where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved together with a series of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to