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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the identical pub, attending the same religious building and placing their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big car park – is likely to