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A creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and placing their young ones to the same school.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the whole village, creating their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to show ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were asked early on about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to