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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete community, creating their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat across the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to present identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to