🔗 Share this article

A brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the same church and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete village, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to