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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were required to display identification, although each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to