🔗 Share this article

A stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started commemorating their history. The work is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and placing their children to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained together with a series of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but more than double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big car park – is probable to