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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same inn, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted early on about how much wall they desired to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is probable to