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A stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the entire community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to present ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

2 observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to