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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to