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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical inn, visiting the very same religious building and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of displays showing the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to