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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents gathering in the very same inn, visiting the identical church and placing their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to display identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled early on about how much wall they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they sought to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to