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A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle 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 barricade. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole village, creating their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show ID, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and large car park – is likely to