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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to