🔗 Share this article

An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their past. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the residents gathering in the same tavern, going to the very same church and sending their children to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they occupied the entire community, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They neither supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately 15k came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to