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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across 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 labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the same school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the west edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is probable to