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A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their heritage. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same tavern, going to the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how much wall they wished to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big car park – is expected to