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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the same church and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director details the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to