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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to