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An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

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

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents gathering in the same inn, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never both, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to