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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical pub, attending the very same church and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole village, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is probable to