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A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, attending the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – 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, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to