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A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back across the creek. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Locals were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Changes

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