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A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same inn, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to