🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started commemorating their past. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same inn, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are maintained together with a series of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and big car park – is likely to