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An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they took over the entire community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat across the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large car park – is probable to