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A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the identical religious building and sending their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to