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An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to present identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to keep. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to look after their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is likely to