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An stream so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, going to the very same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to show ID, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Developments

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