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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents gathering in the same tavern, going to the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the entire village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the two, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is likely to