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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the very same inn, attending the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Locals were polled early on about how much barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Evolutions

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