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An brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the very same inn, going to the very same place of worship and sending their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, establishing their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They opted for a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

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