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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the same pub, visiting the same religious building and sending their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat across the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the west fringe, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to