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A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They selected a portion on the west edge, close to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to