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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same inn, going to the very same church and sending their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big car park – is probable to