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An creek so low you hardly got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their children to the same school.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to present ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to