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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers set about documenting their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, attending the very same church and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back across the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display ID, although all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is expected to