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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the west fringe, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to