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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to show identification, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to