🔗 Share this article

An creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical tavern, attending the same church and enrolling their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they occupied the complete village, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how much structure they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but never both, lest they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. the director informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is probable to