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An brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their history. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian edge, near where a local resident succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to