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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, attending the identical church and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the community’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to