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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the same pub, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning 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, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to