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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their past. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, attending the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, creating their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to