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A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical church and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they took over the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to