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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, 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 exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the identical school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the whole village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present ID, although all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to