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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat across the creek. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to