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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same inn, attending the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show identification, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but not both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to