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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the very same church and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to