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A creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their heritage. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the very same inn, visiting the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the identical learning center.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the two, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big parking lot – is expected to