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A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the creek. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big car park – is probable to