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An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same pub, visiting the same church and placing their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back across the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to show identification, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to