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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, attending the same place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over two times more persons (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to