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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to display ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled early on about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to