🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life building it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, movie theater and large vehicle area – is likely to