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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, attending the same religious building and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a series of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to