🔗 Share this article

An stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the identical tavern, attending the same church and placing their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show ID, although each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled early on about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux showing the most impactful dates in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to