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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, going to the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to display identification, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to