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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back across the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They chose a section on the west fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to