🔗 Share this article

An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the entire community, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to present ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west edge, near where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved together with a series of displays depicting the most significant dates in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than two times more people (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to