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An brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted early on about how much wall they wished to keep. They selected a portion on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to