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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present identification, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never both, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to