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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to present identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many individuals (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large vehicle area – is likely to