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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the very same inn, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They selected a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to