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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, going to the same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display identification, although all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to