🔗 Share this article

A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same inn, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the whole hamlet, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were required to present identity papers, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They selected a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to