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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the identical inn, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identification, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were polled early on about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is probable to