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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance 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 early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large car park – is likely to