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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same inn, attending the very same church and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a section on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to look after their fields; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large car park – is probable to