🔗 Share this article

A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same inn, attending the same church and placing their children to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat across the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to