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A stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to