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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wished to preserve. They chose a section on the western perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big car park – is likely to