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An stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same inn, visiting the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the entire village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how much structure they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number people (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is probable to