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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the entire village, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to display identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to