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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about commemorating their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, visiting the very same church and sending their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to