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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show ID, although each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to