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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

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

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to