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A creek so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the whole village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identity papers, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They chose a section on the west edge, close to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained together with a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large car park – is likely to