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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began memorialising their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, 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 explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life building it. Villagers were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to