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A brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the same pub, attending the same church and enrolling their kids to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is expected to