🔗 Share this article

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to present ID, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted early on about how much wall they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big car park – is expected to