🔗 Share this article

An creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began memorialising their heritage. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, attending the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to show ID, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is likely to