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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, attending the same church and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most significant events in the community’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is expected to