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An brook so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to pull back across the stream. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15k visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is expected to