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A brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents socializing in the same pub, going to the same church and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, near where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over two times more individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to