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An brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, visiting the very same church and enrolling their children to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are maintained together with a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to