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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, going to the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to