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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to show identity papers, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to