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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began commemorating their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, attending the same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to present ID, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, near where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k visited each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to