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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the same tavern, visiting the same church and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) were killed trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to