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A creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the same inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15k visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to