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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the identical pub, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the complete village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to