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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more persons (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to