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An stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the same church and placing their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the west edge, near where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is probable to