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An creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, visiting the same church and placing their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, although each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k visited every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large car park – is likely to