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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the same inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the whole village, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show ID, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to