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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their past. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they took over the complete village, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own managed to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big car park – is probable to