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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, attending the identical church and sending their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but over two times more people (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is likely to