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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the west perimeter, near where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to