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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same inn, going to the very same place of worship and sending their kids to the same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted early on about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

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