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An brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the same church and placing their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display ID, although everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big car park – is likely to