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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays showing the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to