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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to display identification, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are preserved together with a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is likely to