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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director informs me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to