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An brook so low you barely got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their history. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

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

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, attending the very same place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the western edge, near where a local resident managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Farmers required particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to