🔗 Share this article

A brook so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

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

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the same pub, going to the identical church and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are preserved together with a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and big vehicle area – is expected to