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An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over two times more individuals (more than 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to