🔗 Share this article

A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began commemorating their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the same inn, attending the very same religious building and placing their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the brook. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were required to display identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big parking lot – is expected to