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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical pub, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the complete community, creating their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to pull back across the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to