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An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the same inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is probable to