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An brook so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the very same tavern, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “likewise” to a West German local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to keep. They selected a stretch on the western fringe, near where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is likely to