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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole village, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many people (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to