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A creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not both, lest they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to