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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, attending the very same church and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the complete village, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present ID, although each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large car park – is probable to