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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches 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 ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to