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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, 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 was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the identical pub, going to the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to