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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical inn, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we move, the director details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to