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A stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the identical place of worship and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the western perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but not the two, in case they attempted to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to