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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers required special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is probable to