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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents gathering in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a time, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is likely to