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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the identical school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never both, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number people (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to