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An creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents set about documenting their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their children to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. About 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, 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, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large parking lot – is likely to