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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the identical inn, going to the identical church and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is probable to