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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to