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A brook so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the same tavern, attending the very same church and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to