🔗 Share this article

A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, visiting the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the same school.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

2 observation towers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to