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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, attending the very same church and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the western perimeter, near where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to