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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the identical inn, visiting the identical religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is expected to