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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the western fringe, near where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to