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An stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained together with a series of displays illustrating the most significant events in the community’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to