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An creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole community, establishing their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the western edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to