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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to