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A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened 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 past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to present identification, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to