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A stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

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