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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, going to the same church and enrolling their kids to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to present identification, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to