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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is expected to