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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the identical church and placing their kids to the same school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a set of displays showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big car park – is likely to