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An stream so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began commemorating their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Residents were consulted early on about how much barrier they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a villager managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to