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A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to