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An brook so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, near where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Evolutions

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