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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about documenting their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the very same inn, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They chose a section on the west fringe, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are conserved together with a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more people (more than 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Developments

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