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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the same pub, going to the identical religious building and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the western fringe, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to