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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, going to the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to