🔗 Share this article

A creek so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals drinking in the identical pub, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire community, creating their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most impactful dates in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and big parking lot – is probable to