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An creek so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, going to the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k visited every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to