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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same inn, going to the identical church and enrolling their children to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to present ID, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to