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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, residents could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About 15k visited annually, binoculars in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to