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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their children to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western fringe, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to