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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the identical pub, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, creating their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identification, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, near where one of their own managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s past. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big car park – is expected to