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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to show identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western edge, close to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays depicting the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, lest they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to