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A brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the same pub, going to the very same place of worship and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, close to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we walk, the director details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is probable to