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A stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, visiting the same church and placing their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not both, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and big car park – is probable to