🔗 Share this article

An stream so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their history. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the identical religious building and placing their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, establishing their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls increased they were required to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a western local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were consulted early on about how much wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the community’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and large car park – is likely to