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An brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, going to the same church and sending their kids to the same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, establishing their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to