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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire community, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how much structure they desired to preserve. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained together with a set of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not the two, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to