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A brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular 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 the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: 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 formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his working life building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over two times more people (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to