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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the same inn, attending the very same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Approximately 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to