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An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a community for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the same pub, going to the very same place of worship and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the complete community, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more people (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big car park – is probable to