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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two guard towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is expected to