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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, attending the identical church and sending their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large parking lot – is probable to