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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the same inn, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but over twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

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