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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about documenting their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the very same pub, going to the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to