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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the very same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the complete community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to display identification, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to