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A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, going to the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they took over the entire community, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were obliged to show ID, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15k visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large car park – is probable to