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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, near where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to