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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about documenting their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled early on about how how long a section wall they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

2 guard towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is probable to