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An creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical pub, attending the same religious building and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to