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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, attending the identical place of worship and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were required to show ID, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A female resident was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a set of displays showing the most significant events in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to