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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the identical inn, going to the identical church and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole village, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to