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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the very same pub, attending the very same religious building and sending their kids to the same school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they seized the complete community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over double the number persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Changes

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