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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started documenting their history. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete village, setting up their command in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a period, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present identity papers, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is probable to