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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire hamlet, creating their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. About 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to