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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking 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 Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the entire community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was placed on a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, near where one of their own managed to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

2 observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to