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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Historical Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical inn, visiting the same church and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15k visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to