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A stream so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete community, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the western edge, close to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never both, lest they sought to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over twice as many people (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to