🔗 Share this article

An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started documenting their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, attending the very same church and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, setting up their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They selected a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Installations

2 watchtowers are preserved together with a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over double the number people (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of destination. About 15k visited each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and large vehicle area – is probable to