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An brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their past. The work is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were required to present identity papers, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most significant events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large car park – is likely to