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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their past. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much wall they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over double the number people (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to